“When we looked at this case we discovered an organisation that simply didn’t take adequate precautions to protect customer information. Its failure to do so has caused anxiety for its customers not to mention potential fraud issues.”

He added: “There are simple steps companies should take when using this type of equipment including using encryption, making sure the device is secure and routine monitoring of equipment. RSA did not do any of this.”

An RSA spokesperson said: “RSA serves nine million customers in over 100 countries and we take a breach of our security and protocols very seriously. Whilst there remains no evidence to suggest that the stolen storage device has resulted in any economic loss for the customers involved; we recognise that this should have never have happened and we would like to say sorry once again to those of our customers and partners who were impacted.

“We have reviewed and reinforced our data protection procedures to mitigate the risk of this happening again – the substantive work that has been undertaken since then to improve date protection in our company has been acknowledged by the ICO.